MDAC First Listen (part 00111000)

[jadidih101]

I
Next hardware task for Jarek will be the ADC DEV board - but poor Jarek has a whole host of software to complete + I need to draw up the ADC schematic which will be based on the earlier FDAC design work I'd done in the past... it was some time ago now that I need to bring myself back upto speed on the ADC again - but its intended to get the MDAC2 ADC design nailed so its necessary anyway...

JohnW,

How about working on MDAC2 analogue, digital and PSU? For the love of all that is holy when is the work on these going to be the highest priority?

We are almost in the middle of August now and still don't have the work on MDAC2 main parts started, let alone completed.

You seem to be totally wrapped up in this steamer and are neglecting MDAC2 analogue board, MDAC2 digital board, and MDAC2 PSU.

Soon the board manufacturing stuff is going to arrive and you will be so occupied with that and DETOX that there will be no time to work on MDAC2 stuff.

Please, please let get this thing finished.

 

[travelfotografe]

Hi John,

I am in a similar situation. While Singapore uses UK plug type, I use a US-style power distributor. If the DETOX power supply is universal voltage, then I will want a US-style plug and not UK-style.

Can you confirm if the DETOX power supply is universal voltage?

Leon

Hi John,

I got the Detox email from Renata and responded, but after catching up with this thread I can see I misunderstood. I thought she was asking me about the power supply standard, but it seems that's universal, and you're only asking about the plug type, correct? If so I will need a US-style plug (not UK as per the Australian power supply standard).

 

[JohnW]

JohnW,

How about working on MDAC2 analogue, digital and PSU? For the love of all that is holy when is the work on these going to be the highest priority?

We are almost in the middle of August now and still don't have the work on MDAC2 main parts started, let alone completed.

You seem to be totally wrapped up in this steamer and are neglecting MDAC2 analogue board, MDAC2 digital board, and MDAC2 PSU.

Soon the board manufacturing stuff is going to arrive and you will be so occupied with that and DETOX that there will be no time to work on MDAC2 stuff.

jadidih101,

I repeat and I repeat and I repeat but you don't want to listen we are now a small team here and have a few projects being handled by different groups.

I'm working on the MDAC2 design (currently DAC PCB) and Jareks working on the streamer hardware - the streamer hardware is critical and it should not be underestimated the amount of work required for the software - you know this from your industry experience.

There is ZERO point in having MDAC2 hardware complete and THEN start working on software - we need to run in parallel, and then its a chicken and egg situation... its part of the development process to have hardware engineering to get early "Eval / demo boards" to the sofwtare team so they can get worik.

These development boards are simple designs that we can spin quickly so that the software team can get to work - we have no choice BUT to provide them some form of development "hardware" otherwise we cannot test our hardware without the software - we need to load software into the boards to "get them powered up"...

I'm sorry but your going to have to put up with lots more talk of development boards and software as we progress to the final stages of complete MDAC2 board set. The streamer is by far the most complex software and its become integrated at a system level - its the backbone of the "front panel" upgrade option.

EACH PCB is one step closer to the completed MDAC2 and ultimately FDAC - you should be pleased that these boards are being competed as they are key components to the MDAC2 design (Streamer / ADC / LCD interface boards etc.)!!!

And YES - we will be inevitably wrapped up with Streamer / Detox production when the PnP machine is commissioned, which is why I'm trying to get as much done on the MDAC2 design before the machine arrives - and why the burst of PCB releases...

But manufacturing the Streamer / Detox does mean we will finally start to ship something to the project sponsors

 

[JohnW]

Hi John,

I am in a similar situation. While Singapore uses UK plug type, I use a US-style power distributor. If the DETOX power supply is universal voltage, then I will want a US-style plug and not UK-style.

Can you confirm if the DETOX power supply is universal voltage?

Leon

Leon,

The PSU is NOT universal, there are 3 versions:-

120V US Plug

230V EU Plug

230V UK plug

The Adaptors are moulded with plug so the plug so sadly cannot be simply "chopped off" the cable and replaced with a suitable "local" plug.

 

[jadidih101]

jadidih101,

I repeat and I repeat and I repeat but you don't want to listen we are now a small team here and have a few projects being handled by different groups.

I'm working on the MDAC2 design (currently DAC PCB) and Jareks working on the streamer hardware - the streamer hardware is critical and it should not be underestimated the amount of work required for the software - you know this from your industry experience.

There is ZERO point in having MDAC2 hardware complete and THEN start working on software - we need to run in parallel, and then its a chicken and egg situation... its part of the development process to have hardware engineering to get early "Eval / demo boards" to the sofwtare team so they can get worik.

These development boards are simple designs that we can spin quickly so that the software team can get to work - we have no choice BUT to provide them some form of development "hardware" otherwise we cannot test our hardware without the software - we need to load software into the boards to "get them powered up"...

I'm sorry but your going to have to put up with lots more talk of development boards and software as we progress to the final stages of complete MDAC2 board set. The streamer is by far the most complex software and its become integrated at a system level - its the backbone of the "front panel" upgrade option.

EACH PCB is one step closer to the completed MDAC2 and ultimately FDAC - you should be pleased that these boards are being competed as they are key components to the MDAC2 design (Streamer / ADC / LCD interface boards etc.)!!!

And YES - we will be inevitably wrapped up with Streamer / Detox production when the PnP machine is commissioned, which is why I'm trying to get as much done on the MDAC2 design before the machine arrives - and why the burst of PCB releases...

But manufacturing the Streamer / Detox does mean we will finally start to ship something to the project sponsors

JohnW,

First of all, I am sorry if I am trying your patient here but I think these things have to be brought to the surface so we can progress.

I do not want the Streamer/ADC/LCD panel on the MDAC2. These are all OPTIONS as far as I know and MDAC2/PSU do not require them to function. So to say that we have to wait for these thing to complete before you can start on MDAC2 is news to me. Why do we need a streamer/ADC/LCD to test the DAC+analogue+PSU board? Where is the indispensable dependency to Streamer/ADC/LCD? Can we not test using input from USB through Detox to MDAC2 to complete the MDAC2?

Best of luck to people who want Streamer/ADC/LCD. I am not one of them and I believe there are many others who do not want them either, or at least are happy to wait for them after MDAC2.

John, you know my background and let me tell you this based on my experience and in the spirit of friendship. STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM SOFTWARE. It is a black hole for your time and resources. There has never been or ever will be a software project that is even nearly finished. It is the nature of the beast. Every line of code in a software is inherently a bug because it is a reflection of one person's solution/understanding to a problem/requirement that is for ever changing. Look at the firmware for MDAC and its variations and you can see the problem. Look at all the request for features that you have been getting recently. It is only going to get worse. Stop drinking the Kool Aid volumio is giving you

Please accept this in the spirit that is offered. It seems that every time we get near a finished MDAC2 you will find something else that you need to complete it. First it was VFET as you needed a good amp to test it. Then you could not finish VFET because there was not enough time and you could not get a good enough case. Then we had FDAC because there was not enough room for all the stuff in MDAC2. Then you needed DETOX because you were not happy with input to MDAC2. And now you say you need Streamer/LCD first. It just seems to me that MDAC2 will never see the light of day because of everything else that has to finish. It is the perfectionist in you but the end result is nothing fully functional is being produced.

I am happy to continue to support you, provide fund if needed, but I don't think I am out of line in insisting that you finish MDAC2 without the streamer/LCD/ADC first or at least have it as the highest priority. All the extra features can be developed afterwards (or in parallel) for FDAC and as options for MDAC2.

Sorry for the long posting.

 

[JohnW]

I do not want the Streamer/ADC/LCD panel on the MDAC2. These are all OPTIONS as far as I know and MDAC2/PSU do not require them to function. So to say that we have to wait for these thing to complete before you can start on MDAC2 is news to me. Why do we need a streamer/ADC/LCD to test the DAC+analogue+PSU board? Where is the indispensable dependency to Streamer/ADC/LCD? Can we not test using input from USB through Detox to MDAC2 to complete the MDAC2?

At this this time its not clear which version of the MDAC2 (Original front panel) or updated front panel will be released first. From our internal engineering perspective the upgraded panel is the simplest (ignoring the complexity's of manufacturing) as we have to some how interface the original MDAC front panel MCU to our new hardware solution - we almost have to build a "Virtual" MDAC for the old front panel - this is a pig of a job and not satisfactory way to work.

With Michelangelo and his software team taking care of the front panel UI this just leaves us with a simple UART based APi between "front panel" and system MCU, so its really the least work option - but we still have a few practical / physical issue to be resolve.

But irrespective of these details, you miss the point that Jarek and Michelangelo handle these issue - I spend a few hours occasionally with drawing up schematics, overseeing the PCB layout or testing PCB's for Jarek or guidance on the UI for Michelangelo - otherwise these designs progress "themselves" with little input from me, I'm mostly left to work on the MDAC2 PCB when I'm not "house keeping" the operations here (Emails, Vendor communications, etc).

 

[misterdog]

Are you having to make 2 different MDAC2 boards then, one that interfaces with the original front panel and one for the streamer/new front panel ?

Why not keep the streamer/front panel for the FDAC and just make the MDAC2 board for the original front panel.

Simple, the same reason I use 'porthole' vents, they cost under £1 are fitted in 5 minutes and work.

 

[JohnW]

No just one PCB but with 2 interfaces. The hardware not such an issue but the software - will will have to write software for the MDAC2 to make it emulate the original MDAC with all its limitations - we had to be very creative with the original MDAC we "shoe horned" the front panel MCU to behave more like a DSP.

Its messy and limiting to work this way on the MDAC2 - hence why we will "discontinue" software development for the original front panel once the initial units are shipped (we will still support with any bug fixes).

All future development will be focused on the updated front panel - which might endup being the first version released as the software is already being developed...

 

[JohnW]

There are known issues wrt to the SQ effects from USB Audio, hence the need for devices like the Detox / Regen etc..

This brings a interesting possibility to connect Detox into one of the USB outputs of the streamer, and feed it back into the MDAC2 USB input and see if there's any difference from internal or external data paths!!!

I bet you there will be (there always is with HiFi), but not sure which one will sound better...

 

[JohnW]

With MDac2 I assume that could stay as it is, but if I would go for the streamer option, would it be possible to directly connect the USB HDD (2,5 inch, low power consumption powered by USB) and the streamer would act as server for the phone app? So that I wouldn't need the notebook? Or would I still need the notebook+HDD as "network server"?

What would be best here? I always like to have as few boxes as possible.

You can connect the external SSD drive directly to the MDAC2 streamer and have a nice "Computer less" solution.

The question on everyone's minds is how responsive is the MDAC2 streamer with large music libraries?

The largest drive I've seen connected was around 400GB of music and after indexing and generating the internal Database, the library size did not seem to effect the UI responsiveness...

I feel rather embarrassed, my music library folder on my PC is around 10GB! but maybe now I have a "usable" streamer solution I'll start adding to it

I'm certainly hoping that we can get the internal 64GB eMMC "option" working - I could then hold my "favourite" music collection without needing an external drive.

 

[jirij]

The question on everyone's minds is how responsive is the MDAC2 streamer with large music libraries?

The largest drive I've seen connected was around 400GB of music and after indexing and generating the internal Database, the library size did not seem to effect the UI responsiveness...

I didn't notice anyone asking. It's a common knowledge amongst "computer experts" that index-based searching is pretty fast as it slows down circa logarithmically with the amount of data (in case of most binary search trees) or even less at the cost of more disk/memory space (hash tables), which means you can have billions of music tracks with basically instant lookup as most lookup criteria are easy to index (beginning of a name of artist/album/year/etc.) and for those that are not (fulltext substring searching), techniques like trigram indexing exist.

Compared to ie. indexing of 2D or 3D geographical data, this is really easy and well supported (ie. sqlite).

 

[JohnW]

For sure when a "New" NAS drive is plugged into the streamer for the first time the systems is basically unusable as the Streamer is heavily accessing both the NAS drive and downloading the relevant album art from the internet - this places a heavy burden on the single Host USB port on the CM3 that is also shared with the audio sub-processor system.

Once the internal database in built for the NAS drive - then its surprisingly responsive.

Our early software build did not indicate when / while the database was being built and gives a bad first impression (new user, plugins has NAS drive for the first time) - I've asked Michelangelo to add a "rotating logo" or some such in the top corner of the screen to indicate during the library scanning process - so one can account for the sluggish responsiveness.

 

[jirij]

AFAIK that's one of the reasons why some players have a separate concept of "music library" and don't add any accessible files to it by default, the user has to say "I want this folder/disk to be in my library" ie. by dragging the folder/disk over to the library screen (not saying this is exactly applicable to MDAC2).

 

[Asphaltradler]

For sure when a "New" NAS drive is plugged into the streamer for the first time the systems is basically unusable as the Streamer is heavily accessing both the NAS drive and downloading the relevant album art from the internet.

I hope this can be switched off because it would be completely superfluous in my case. 1st I have all album art inserted as folder.jpg myself, and 2nd it almost never is correctly found automatically for classical albums (how many Beethoven 5th symphony are there?)

BTW 10gb of files is really embarrassing. ��That's only 30 CDs or 6-8 hires albums! After 25 years of buying music I have more of one work alone often enough. The database therefore must be able to switch from one Mahler symphony to all others, or same work (this symphony) all interpretations, or albums with same conductor, or same genre and so on. Most software I tried could not do that because it's written only with Pop in mind where only artist is of any interest. Foobar allows that via user addable meta data fields.

It's often interesting to find recordings I didn't knew I had via this sort of hyperlinking��(That's why I need a database after all, because it's impossible to know 2000 recordings... At least not all every time...)

 

[Asphaltradler]

BTW I don't understand why John refers to NAS drives connected - a NAS is in the network, but I thought the drive is connected to USB?

 

[JohnW]

I hope this can be switched off because it would be completely superfluous in my case. 1st I have all album art inserted as folder.jpg myself, and 2nd it almost never is correctly found automatically for classical albums (how many Beethoven 5th symphony are there?)

Gosh I wish I knew - I'm just happy that we have something the resembles a streamer working but I'm sure Michaelangelo and his team are Pro's

BTW 10gb of files is really embarrassing. ��That's only 30 CDs or 6-8 hires albums! After 25 years of buying music I have more of one work alone often enough. The database therefore must be able to switch from one Mahler symphony to all others, or same work (this symphony) all interpretations, or albums with same conductor, or same genre and so on. Most software I tried could not do that because it's written only with Pop in mind where only artist is of any interest. Foobar allows that via user addable meta data fields.

Well its my test music folder we use "everyday" for listening sessions - you now, know tracks! otherwise everything else is on CD's which is a pain and I'm keen to copy onto a drive once we have a solution I'm comfortable using.

 

[JohnW]

BTW I don't understand why John refers to NAS drives connected - a NAS is in the network, but I thought the drive is connected to USB?

The MDAC2 media player (streamer) works with ANY device from internal memory, USB connected CD drive, USB Flash drive, SSD drive, NAS or network device, other devices on the local network, Internet sites etc.

From the users perspective, the operation of the streamer UI is basically the same irrespective of where the files are stored - which brings up some interesting "problems" with searching, should we just search local drives or a more global search and include searching Spotify and other steaming service music Libraries?

Basically we have made the Search engine mode sensitive, so if you search from the home screen it will search globally, but if your on your NAS it will only search the local NAS drive.

 

[stephengrenfell]

This brings a interesting possibility to connect Detox into one of the USB outputs of the streamer, and feed it back into the MDAC2 USB input and see if there's any difference from internal or external data paths!!!

I bet you there will be (there always is with HiFi), but not sure which one will sound better...

There's only one way to find out....

In my setup I notice a distortion in vocals around sylables sh or st. Its more pronounced with female vocalist than males. Its the same which ever player I use Roon, Audirvana or iTunes. Mdac and Cdq are the same. I spent ages tinkering with different valves in the quad amps, but it's still there. Borrowed some speakers - ditto. But if I use a Windows pc as the "source" it has almost gone... both my mac mini and imac have the same distortion. Different USB cables made little difference either. Roll on the detox....

 

[Rune]

BTW I don't understand why John refers to NAS drives connected - a NAS is in the network, but I thought the drive is connected to USB?

As far as I remember Volumio will only scan the NAS folder if you add it to a watch list. This is really how it should work IMHO.

I would not expect the MDAC2 version to behave different than normal Volumio regarding how it manages your Music collection. (If you want it to)

So take a look at the volumio site or the Volumio forum for more information.

 

[DANOFDANGER]

10gb is nothing. I have over a TB of neatly organised albums.